ZPEnergy.com - GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS SET TO RISE AS NEW SOURCES FOR TRANSPORT FUEL ARE USED

The use of low-quality sources of petroleum, such as tar sands, will dramatically raise global greenhouse gas emissions according to a new study.

The work is reported in the paper Risks of the oil transition, published in the new Institute of Physics open-access electronic-only journal, Environmental Research Letters (ERL).

Lead author Professor Alex Farrell of the University of California, Berkeley said: “Liquid fuels for transportation are increasingly coming from a wide range of sources other than conventional petroleum. We call this the oil transition and we conclude that the environmental risks associated with this transition are much bigger than the risk to a country’s economy or the security of their fuel supply.”

Tar sands are currently one of the biggest unconventional sources for petroleum. Bitumen, a very think mixture of organic liquids, is mined from the tar sands. Natural gas is then bubbled through the bitumen to separate the impurities, mostly sulphur. The use of natural gas for removing impurities and then in refining tar sands into oil is a highly energy intensive process itself, even before the resulting oil is refined into gasoline and then burned in vehicles.

The sulphur separated in the production combines with Hydrogen to form H2S, the characteristic 'rotten egg' compound. Solid sulphur is then separated out, yielding vast pyramids of yellow sulphur blocks which are stacked and stored on the site.

“We have calculated that production of fuels from low-quality and synthetic petroleum, such as tar sands, could have greenhouse gas emissions 30%-70% greater than the emissions from conventional petrol. Tar sands are already being used as a source for petrol, with over one million barrels refined each day in Alberta, Canada. With oil selling for $60/barrel on the international market, the $30/barrel production cost for tar sands is no longer an obstacle to production as it used to be.”

Professor Farrell continued: “The enormous abundance of fossil fuel reserves means that the real challenge for the future is not dealing with scarcity of supply but managing the transition from traditional sources such as oil fields to new unconventional sources whilst protecting the environment and balancing the changes that the transition will bring to the global economy and the security of supply for individual countries.”

Source: Institute of Physics
Story from: http://www.physorg.com/news84740183.html


Create an account	Home · Topics · Downloads · Your Account · Submit News · Top 10


All logos and trademarks in this site are property of their respective owner. The comments are property of their posters, all the rest © 2002-2016 by ZPEnergy. Disclaimer: No content, on or affiliated with ZPEnergy should be construed as or relied upon as investment advice. While every effort is made to ensure that the information contained on ZPEnergy is correct, the operators of ZPEnergy make no warranties as to its accuracy. In all respects visitors should seek independent verification and investment advice. Keywords: ZPE, ZPF, Zero Point Energy, Zero Point Fluctuations, ZPEnergy, New Energy Technology, Small Scale Implementation, Energy Storage Technology, Space-Energy, Space Energy, Natural Potential, Investors, Investing, Vacuum Energy, Electromagnetic, Over Unity, Overunity, Over-Unity, Free Energy, Free-Energy, Ether, Aether, Cold Fusion, Cold-Fusion, Fuel Cell, Quantum Mechanics, Van der Waals, Casimir, Advanced Physics, Vibrations, Advanced Energy Conversion, Rotational Magnetics, Vortex Mechanics, Rotational Electromagnetics, Earth Electromagnetics, Gyroscopes, Gyroscopic Effects PHP-Nuke Copyright © 2005 by Francisco Burzi. This is free software, and you may redistribute it under the GPL. PHP-Nuke comes with absolutely no warranty, for details, see the license.